Loft Conversion

SamCo

Hi guys,

I have been having a debate with someone regarding a loft conversion.

On a 2 bedroom bungalow (125m2) worth £300k, how much more value would converting the lift create? The other bungalows on the street have done this and managed to get 1 - 2 rooms up there.

My question is, roughly how much will it cost and how much value will it add?

I know this is a very vague question but they do not believe the value added will justify the cost spent.

DOH_a

How long is a piece of string?

There are so many variables and options that it’d be almost impossible to provide approx. build costs.

Can you not speak to those up the road who have had it done? If those properties have been sold recently, look up their sales figures on Rightmove or Zoopla. Alternatively, speak to a local estate agent.

rach_k

I've always been led to believe that the amount you spend is roughly the amount you increase the value of the house by.  We spent around £80k adding 2 bedrooms and a nice big bathroom (our other bathroom is tiny) to a 3 bedroom terrace and expect we've added about that to the value (South London house prices).  Obviously there are things you can do to waste your money (fit something horrendous only you would ever want or bodge it and you might not make the money back when you come to sell) and things you can do to save money (if you are able to do some of the work properly yourself you might make profit) but if you do a good job and are paying somebody else to do it, I wouldn't do it expecting to make a profit.  I think people normally do it because it saves costs on moving to a bigger house.

I wouldn't buy a house and pay £100K extra for something I know the current owners spent £80K doing.  Why would I?    I could pay £100K less on an unconverted house, spend £80K doing the loft and do everything to my own personal taste.  

rob7475

Loft conversions rarely lead to a profit when you come to sell the house. If you want a loft conversion to improve the house for yourself, that's great. If you're doing it to make money, I wouldn't bother.
It's ok adding an an extra two bedrooms but if the ground floor is out of proportion, you end up with a top heavy house with lots of bedrooms but no real 'living' space for the occupants.

Mistral001

In the OP's case, changing a two bedroom bungalow into a four bedroom chalet bungalow may add a quite a lot to the value of the property, but only if it is designed properly with say dormer windows in each bedroom and a small bathroom to serve these two bedrooms.  

Doozergirl

rob7475 said:

Loft conversions rarely lead to a profit when you come to sell the house. If you want a loft conversion to improve the house for yourself, that's great. If you're doing it to make money, I wouldn't bother.
It's ok adding an an extra two bedrooms but if the ground floor is out of proportion, you end up with a top heavy house with lots of bedrooms but no real 'living' space for the occupants.

This is a bungalow.  It's hardly going to be top heavy.  

Doozergirl

Whether you make money is totally relative to the price of the land the house sits on.  The same property could be £150k in one place but £1,000,000 in another.  The price of building work doesn't fluctuate quite that much! 

I think you could come out better off if the property was worth £300k to start with, but as DOH.a says, we can't guess what the work costs because a) we haven't even seen the house!  and b) pricing is an art, not a science anyway.  

rob7475

Doozergirl said:

rob7475 said:

Loft conversions rarely lead to a profit when you come to sell the house. If you want a loft conversion to improve the house for yourself, that's great. If you're doing it to make money, I wouldn't bother.
It's ok adding an an extra two bedrooms but if the ground floor is out of proportion, you end up with a top heavy house with lots of bedrooms but no real 'living' space for the occupants.

This is a bungalow.  It's hardly going to be top heavy.  

I didn't mean top heavy from a construction point of view - I should have explained it better 

What I mean is, if you turn a 2 bed bungalow into a 4 bed, you run the risk of the living areas (kitchen, dning, living room) not being big enough to cope with the extra occupants the extra bedrooms create.

It all depends on the living space you currently have I suppose. 

akira181

If you need the space a conversion will bring and use it for years to come, does it really matter what value it will add to the property?  It's not like you can spend it and if you do sell years down the line, who knows what the market will be like.

If it's purely to turn a profit, there's too many variables and no fixed answer.  It could possibly detract from the value if the conversion looks horrible and doesn't fit with the area.  You'll need to check the price difference between similar 2 and 4 bedroom properties in your area, ideally of similar bungalow conversions to get an idea.

TELLIT01

All my expertise comes from watching "Homes under the hammer" but loft conversions rarely seem to add more value than they cost.

SamCo

akira181 said:

does it really matter what value it will add to the property?

Yes otherwise I would not be asking. I want to sell it after renovation